When applications attempt to play more than one media stream on current devices, some or all the applications are allowed access to the presentation devices of the device, for example a display device and/or an audio device. While some systems attempt to manage network bandwidth usage between and/or among media players that are operating at the same time. Access to a presentation device by applications playing media streams on the same device is not managed. The media streams played by corresponding applications are played on a presentation device regard for other media streams usage of the presentation device. Watching a video or listening to song with interference from other audio streams and video streams is a common experience.
When listening to a song and browsing the web, many web sites include audio in their web pages. The web page audio plays despite the fact that a song is already be played by a music player application. This often leads to an unpleasant listening experience. If a user locates multiple videos and accesses them in multiple browser windows and/or tabs the videos play as if the user is able to watch all of them at the same time. Videos in windows that are obscured by other windows or that are minimized continue to play as if there was someone watching. Some web pages do wait to detect that they are visible before beginning to play a stream, but these pages play their streams without regard for other media players playing and/or otherwise accessing a display or speakers to play one or more media streams.
For audio, a user can adjust the volume, and turn audio on and off for a device. Similarly, a user can turn a display off and/or adjust its brightness. Controlling multiple applications using a display and/or audio devices requires using application provided controls to control and coordinate use of a display and/or audio device, if an application provides a user interface controls for these functions. Web applications behave similarly.
Accordingly, there exists a need for methods, systems, and computer program products for controlling play of media streams.